(Mind32)-What causes stress?

[Quick links]

There are two things here. The external events that induce stress and the internal brain mechanisms that interpret the external events as stress.

I have seen many poor villagers who have barely sufficient to eat. Their life is full of uncertainties. Day in and day out they face all kinds of hardship and their life is really a struggle for existence. But they somehow seem to withstand all these hardships and manage to pull on.

On the other hand, I have seen many well-to-do youngsters who commit suicide unable to bear the stress they face in their life. This is in spite of the fact that they have a secure life, with all comforts, good position in the society, great educational background and so on.

Why is this anomaly?

The reason is that the same set of events may affect different people in different ways. Some may respond to them more negatively than others.

Two amygdalae (shown in red color)

Neuroscientists say that there are brain structures called amygdala that interpret external events as stress or otherwise. There are two of them, one on each half of our brain. Depending on how these organs respond, we may or may not view the same set of events as stress or otherwise.

What is surprising is that these two are not identical in their functioning. While the right one reacts more to negative inputs, the left one may or may not react as much. Further, the right one may invoke action based on negative emotions, while the left one may just lead to analysis of the situation.

Scientists say that these two amygdalae grow at different rates in both men and women. Women seem to develop amygdalae earlier than men. That is believed to be the reason why women are more emotional than men.

Also, the amygdalae in men grow bigger than those in women. Especially men have a bigger right amygdala than the left. That they say explains why men tend to get into physical action when faced with negative emotions, while women may tend to worry more than react!

At an animal level these conclusions may be perfectly valid. Since most of these observations are made using lab animals, these conclusions may be justified to some extent.

But humans are not just animals. We have the capability to think which lower level animals don’t. We are capable of modulating our emotions by our thoughts. We don’t just react; we think and then react – I mean most of us who are evolved beyond animal level 😉

So, stress or otherwise is just not decided by amygdalae. It is beyond that. It is at a much higher level.


What are the things that trigger stress?

Firstly, there has to be rapid transient neural activity. For example, when an animal sees something approaching towards it at a fast pace, it gets stressed fearing an attack.

This rapid neural activity could also be because of internally generated thoughts. That leads to psychological stress. For most of us this is more important than the stress caused by external physical events.

But mere neural activity is not enough. You need to be paying attention to that activity. When you are asleep or totally lost in your thoughts, you don’t care whatever happens close to you even though those events trigger rapid neural activity. So, paying attention is needed to recognize stressful events.

Even when there is rapid neural activity and attention paid to it, sometimes we may not undergo stress. In those cases, we know that the neural activity is not harmful. So, only those activity that gets interpreted as harmful, may trigger stress.

If all these conditions are met, the amygdala may interpret the events as stressful. Not otherwise.

You probably have observed that when you are ill and weak, even a small negative event stresses you.

That is because your body is in an alert mode since it is too weak. It needs to get ready for the ‘flight or fight’ mode earlier than normal case when you are hale and healthy.

So, not everything takes place at amygdala level. Before the amygdala enters the scene, lot more things need to take place.


Stress reduction is one of the biggest outcomes of any meditative practice, Yoga being a typical case. But then how this reduction is achieved depends on the specific practice.

Before we delve into how Yoga minimizes stress, let us first see the problems created by stress. Join me in the next episode when I will try to touch upon that subject.

 

A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019